Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [27]
‘And how do we know you’ll be there?’ another man asked, half-sticking his hand up and then thinking better of it.
Clem stared the man down. ‘Cos the Baron’s buying our silence, remember – yours and mine. If you don’t get paid and decide to tell someone about what we’ve been doing the Baron’ll come looking for me, and that’s something I don’t want. Everyone gets paid, fair and square, all right?’
The man nodded, mollified. ‘All right.’
Sherlock drew himself further behind the stack of crates as the men dispersed, two of them getting on to the cart and two of them opening the massive wooden doors to let it out, leaving Clem to supervise and Denny to stand around looking lost. The man driving the cart made a clicking noise and flicked the horse’s rear end with a stick, and it started to walk off, still eating from the nosebag of hay.
Clem walked towards the large wooden doors, the oil lamp that was clipped to his belt banging against his thigh as he moved. Without turning his head, he jerked his thumb over towards where Sherlock was hiding. ‘Lock that door,’ he growled, ‘then meet me round the front.’
Sherlock’s heart skipped a beat as Denny started walking towards where he was hiding. If he came round the pile of crates he was sure to see Sherlock, and if that happened then Sherlock didn’t give much for his own chances of survival. He shifted his position, tensing ready to run. Could he make it to the side door before Denny could catch him? He wasn’t sure, but he was even less sure that there was any alternative.
Denny came level with the boxes, the dirty, sweaty smell of his clothes wafting around him, and Sherlock cast a quick glance towards Clem, trying to work out whether the burly man was close enough to help Denny catch him. Clem was almost at the main doors now. Sherlock quickly ducked round the side of the crates. As Denny passed by, Sherlock slid back round. If Clem turned his head before he went out of the main doors then he would see Sherlock, as plain as anything, but he didn’t. Sherlock watched, breath caught in his throat, as Clem vanished into the bright afternoon sunshine outside. Moments later one of the doors began to close, its rough wooden edge dragging in the dirt and its rusty hinges squealing.
Sherlock glanced over the top of the crates. Denny had just checked that the side door Sherlock had entered through was properly closed, and was about to throw the bolts that would make sure nobody could get in. As soon as he left, Sherlock would be able to throw the bolts again, open the door and make his escape.
Denny picked a padlock up off the floor and slipped it through a loop in the topmost bolt, and then again through a metal ring that had been attached to the doorframe. The padlock shut with a definitive click. The key projected from the padlock, and Denny pulled it out and slipped it into his pocket. Then he turned, whistling, and headed across the barn.
Sherlock was aware of his heart pounding and his palms becoming clammy. He glanced over his shoulder briefly at the now padlocked door. It looked solid. He wasn’t going to get out that way; at least, not in a hurry and not without making a lot of noise. He would just have to wait until Denny and Clem had left, hold on for another five minutes, then go out the same way that they had.
Denny got to the main doors just as Clem was pushing the second one shut from the outside. The rectangle of light that showed through from the yard grew narrower and narrower. It shrank to a bar, and then a line, and then nothing. The doors closed with a thud.
Sherlock’s heart shrank and darkened in the same way as the light had when he heard the unmistakable sound of a heavy wooden bar being slotted into place across the doors. There was no way out!
For a few moments he could just make out the two men talking, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. He straightened up, ready to move across to the main doors to see if he could make out any words, but a sudden sound stopped him in his tracks.
It was the sound of Clem